Treacherous Bright Streets
by meandmyinsanity
Summary: Do you remember that drunk dial, Darcy mentioned in "Neither Saint nor Sinner"? Well, that's the story of how it came to pass. Take one desperate Lizzie, a toothbrush and lots of alcohol and what do you get? One hell of a phone conversation. "I'm horny, Darcy, what do you think? The way you knit your brow... I want to lick it." Rated M for language and innuendos. Be warned.


**A/N: Okay, guys, some weeks ago I announced that due to some questions you had about Lizzie from Long Live the King and Neither Saint or Sinner, I'd write a one shot about that drunk dial they were talking about (and because I absolute love writing drunk Lizzie:) But really, this will be the third and absolute last in that series, I tell you.**

**This is rated M. Not because of actual sexual contact (even though I use that term freely here), I think we established that I'm not writing stuff about throbbing members and body juices ;) That's just gross. But I did it because, Lizzie is quite drunk here, making inappropriate jokes, cussing and talking about Blow jobs (which Darcy doesn't really appreciate;) Also I use the word "fuck" a lot and since it recently came to my notice that some people are actually offended by this, I changed the rating for this one. Just to be safe;)  
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**Soundtrack: Probably_ Ways and Means_ from Snow Patrol and _Somewhere A Clock Is Ticking_ by the same band;) **

**Besides that, enjoy!**

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><p><span><strong>Treacherous Bright Streets <strong>

"_along the brittle treacherous bright streets_

_of memory comes my heart, singing like_

_an idiot, whispering like a drunken man_

_who (at a certain police corner, suddenly) meets _

_the tall policeman of my mind _

_awake_

_being not asleep, elsewhere our dreams began" _

**"_along the brittle treacherous bright streets", E.E. Cummings_**

"_(i do not know what it is about you that closes_

_and opens; only something in me understands _

_the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)_

_nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands"_

**"_somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond", E.E. Cummings_**

There's a lot to be said about hiding in a closet. It's dark. Small. Stifling and hot and it made Lizzie's nose and fingers itch as if some idiots from advertising had scattered her in itching powder – which they probably did, considering the bag of white powder, she'd seen in Lou Hurst's top drawer... or perhaps that had been something else.

She groaned, the mixture of darkness and her alcohol clouded mind making her even more disoriented than before and the constriction of the narrow walls increased her natural paranoia tenfold. Damn and she prided herself on not being the one with an obsessive-compulsive-disorder.

She tried to adjust her short skirt – part of a dress, that would be considered somewhere between indecent and downright slutty. As if she cared, sometimes you just have to tempt fate – however desperate and unconscious your search for answers might be.

And she did. Tempt fate, so to speak. An indecent skirt-length, a plunging neckline, lace underwear from Victoria's Secret, heels, which could be considered a death trap. _Lipstick_. She never wore lipstick.

And what for? An unhealthy amount of free drinks, too many shots and some groping on the dance-floor later (including some bright, colourful party-hats, that _someone_ had put _somehow_ on her head – she was going to kill the fucker if she ever got his name and set fire to those photos, _somebody_ just had to take), she was sitting in a cramped janitor's closet, head spinning, fingers clenching, trying to figure out what the hell was wrong with her.

She'd planned it all. Get dressed. Get drunk. Get _fucked_.

Easy, or so she'd thought, when she'd hashed out the plan. Predictable, one, two, three. _Done_.

So why the fuck was she struggling with number three like a god-damn toddler, trying to get a sequence of numbers right?

It had been her goal this evening and even though the company's annual Christmas party was probably not the best avenue for this purpose, she'd been desperate enough to try it.

Get dressed, get drunk, get fucked. Fuck _him_ out of her system. Was it too much to ask?

Apparently it was, because every time she was close enough to jump from that cliff, to just cross that bridge – she stopped, faltered, broke down. Like a malfunctioning robot, a broken record, a little, seriously fucked up girl, she'd just turn away from whatever guy, who had just paid for her drinks and was hoping to get lucky tonight, shattering their dirty little fantasies with a kick of her High Heels and a sweep of her hair.

She'd gotten frustrated, had gotten angrier with every drink, every shot, running through her system like a spinning top moments away from a crashing, burning breakdown. She was angry with _him_ for doing that to her, angry with the guys for not trying harder, angry with herself for getting so tangled up in _him_ that even imagining someone else in his place sent her puking over the nearest toilet.

To be honest, she wasn't quite sure, how she'd ended up in the janitor's closet in the first place, the past ten minutes were a blur, but judging from the fact that she was alone, her flight instinct had probably kicked in, saving her in time from Billy Collins or any other overly eager hands.

So the interesting part therefore wasn't _how_ she'd gotten into this closet, but moreover the question _why_ the hell she was still there.

Lizzie tried to move her legs, but the order didn't seem to reach her muscles, because all she got in response was acute pain shooting through her feet – she should've known, there was a drawback to those Heels.

There was a phone in her hand, her phone, she thought, but she wasn't so sure about that in the barely there light and it confused her even more, because her phone was supposed to be waiting for her in her bag under the table in her cubicle.

But it wasn't and she was clutching it like her life depended on it.

She could faintly hear some upbeat music playing when a door was opened and closed down the hallway and she heard giggling, mumbling and the shuffling of footsteps.

She sighed, feeling like her current predicament was like a huge, universal metaphor for her life in general: Stuck somewhere in a semi-compromising place in the dark with no idea how you got and how you'll go from there.

Okay, that wasn't quite true, even though she had no clue how she'd managed to get into the janitor's closet, she had a pretty good inkling how she'd gotten herself into this situation in general.

It all came down to one thing: Getting involved with the enemy.

You know that saying about keeping your friends close and your enemies even closer? Yeah? Screw that, it's bullshit. If you identify your mortal enemy, run as fast as you can and never look back.

Playing nice with the enemy only leads to guilt and other emotional blackmailing possibilities and turns you into this weak, blubbering mess, your older sister has to clean up after showing up at her doorstep at three in the morning, because you just found out that the enemy now has his toothbrush lying around in your bathroom next to some overpriced toothpaste, you'd never in a million years consider buying. Yeah, talk about scary...

The enemy in this case? One William Darcy. The world's most handsome, most eligible bachelor and her fuck buddy for the past few months. She should have known that something like this was going to bite her ass sooner or later.

The thing was, Lizzie Bennet liked calling people her enemies. Jane said she did so randomly, but what her older, most perfect sister didn't know, was that she never did so without purpose. In the end it all came down to being the one in control. Her sister? Really predictable. Her sister's boyfriend? Easy to manage. Stony-stuck-up-William-Darcy? Not really.

Normally that kind of thing would have induced her to turn around and run away screaming, but the thing about that little fucker was that he was one sneaky bastard. It took less than three weeks until he was in her kitchen, panting and pressing her against that fridge with her legs slung around his waist, his hands god-knows-where, while she prayed to God, Jesus and Kent Brockman at the same time for this to never end.

Sitting next to him in the dark afterwards, only illuminated by the blinking red neon sign from the Chinese restaurant across the street, she'd tried to rationalize whatever it was that just happened, but phrases like "overwhelming desire" and "urge to touch him" belonged into those romance-porn-novels, her mother liked to consume and not into something Lizzie Bennet would consider her reality. Honestly, underneath all the confusion (mostly stemming from the fact that they were both laying naked in a bed next to each other) she thought it was kind of hilarious.

So in order to prove that to him, the world and herself foremost, she'd suggested turning this, whatever the hell it was, into a convenient booty call; if she couldn't maintain control by keeping him at arm's length, dropping to her knees at times seemed to be the next best option (how his toothbrush now played into that arrangement, she couldn't figure out for the live of it).

So the phone... Her mind became kinda one-tracked at that and she must have stared at the bright screen for a good ten minutes, her mouth getting dry, her hands sweaty, trying to suppress the urge to just call him.

It was a stupid idea. A really dumb, really stupid idea, considering the fact that he probably wouldn't even pick up, either because he was still stuck in a meeting (at four in the morning not as uncommon as one might think) or asleep in the infamous four-poster bed, she was constantly making inappropriate jokes about (without ever having seen it in person of course).

So why was she hesitating? He wouldn't pick up, so she could just leave a message, considering how unlikely it was that she'd get any kind of action tonight after Billy Collins had practically made her his target a good two hours ago. Either way, her evening, her plans and her feet were kinda screwed, asking him about the twentieth or thirty-third repeat performance or so (not that she was counting) was therefore the only natural outcome.

Her fingers scurried over the phone's screen, skimming through her contacts until she'd found what she was looking for (she'd saved him under the name "archfiend numeró uno", which had made Rick Fitzwilliam crack up and laugh for a good two weeks after he'd served as a delivery boy for the sacred phone-number – he also did a background-check on her, but a tray full of freshly made red-velvet cupcakes persuaded him to leave out one or two of Lizzie's juvenile attempts at rebellion, thank god, the incident with the missing underwear was just too embarrassing to be repeated ever again).

There was the usual beeping noise, but in the dark closet, it sounded louder than it normally would have.

"Don't pick up, don't pick up, don't pick up", she chanted, waiting for the answering machine to kick in.

A rustle, a groan, some shuffling. "'Lizabeth?", a voice asked and all what came out of her mouth was a hissed "Fuck."

"'Liz, that you?", he mumbled sleepily and all her alcohol induced mind came up with was that he sounded kind of adorable.

"No", she squeaked, before she could think about it. Really, was she mentally retarded now?

"Huh?", he asked, sounding more like one of those third-graders, Jane taught everything there is to know about the wonderful world of mathematics (and right about as confused as those kids did on a regular basis).

"No, it's not me", she explained and winced when she realised that her explanation was no better in terms of intelligence.

"Okay... you know, I can see your name and photo flashing across the screen, right? So if you're not Elizabeth Bennet, then who are you?", he asked, sounding grumpy.

"You've got a photo of me?"

There was an exasperated sigh at the other end of the conversation."I do", he said. "Remember that strange one from "The London Dungeon"? I think it was the Jack-the-Ripper-station."

"Really that one? But there's only you and me in that picture!"

"Do you want to discuss my choice of profile pictures at four in the morning?", he grumbled. "Lizzie, what's the problem?"

"You were sleeping, weren't you?", she asked instead of answering, while biting the polish off her nails.

"Yeah, that's what human beings tend to do in the wee hours of the morning", he sighed. "So, what's-"

"You're not human", she cut him off. "I told you that."

"Right", he drawled and there was more shuffling on the other side of the telephone. "So why did you call me?" He wasn't very eloquent, especially after four in the morning. To be honest, extracting more than a few words at a time from him was kind of a miracle – or in other words: Lizzie's challenge of choice.

"Who said I called you?", she deadpanned, thumb still between her teeth. "Could have been a mistake, like so many other things." She mumbled the last words.

"Are you drunk?", he suddenly asked, sounding slightly horrified.

"No!", she shouted, effectively pushing her aching feet against the shelve at the other side of the room, but aside from some toilet paper everything remained in place. "I'm not", she insisted.

"Lizzie...", he warned.

She huffed. "Okay, I'm a bit drunk", she admitted. "Nothing you have to freak out about."

"Lizzie..."

"I'm fine. Totally fine. Like, complete and utterly peachy. You get that? I'm-"

"Fine?", he asked. "I caught that. Where the hell are you, Elizabeth?"

"So, it's Elizabeth now, huh?", she mused, trying to ignore this strange feeling inside her chest at his use of address.

"Weren't you at that company party?", he asked further, ignoring her question again. He did that a lot and usually she just hit him with whatever object available at the time, but unless she discovered an ability for telekinesis in the next twenty seconds, she was sadly out of options.

"I was... still am... I'm a barbie girl.. in a barbie world", she sung, getting off track again. "It's all in plastic, it's fantastic..."

"Where are you?", he asked bewildered, and more than a bit alarmed. "And why are you singing phony one-hit-wonders from the eighties?"

"Do you want me to sing Sting's "Englishman in New York"?", she asked. "'Cause I always feel like a legal alien around you."

He groaned. "What is it with you and aliens?", he asked with a sigh and a yawn and the sound went right through her body, making something inside of her cling, while her skin erupted in goose-bumps.

"I happen to like them", she defended herself. "And it's either that or comparing you to a dinosaur."

"Why a dinosaur?" God, he sounded all prim and proper right now and she just wanted to run her hands through those dark curls again, making an unruly mess out of them or tickle him until he cracked up laughing, just because she could do it (and because it made her feel awfully satisfied with herself).

"Because it's dinosaur-day!", she cried out, laughing hysterically. "It's dinosaur-day and everybody puts on their costumes and you won't stand out anymore!"

"Elizabeth, god damn it, how much did you drink?", he barked

"A bit. A bat. A teeny tiny bowling hat!", she rhymed, overly pleased with herself, while clapping her hands.

"Why do you always use rhyming as a safety blanket?", he growled and she heard moving, the rustling of sheets and she felt a jolt at the thought... somewhere down south...

"Why does it turn me on when I think of you in that giant bed?", she suddenly asked, emboldened by the copious amount of alcohol in her blood. Or was it blood in her alcohol? Yeah, there had been a time, where she'd been a lot funnier. And sober. And not totally hung up on a guy, so far out of her reach, despite him being in her bed every other weekend, that asking a dead Michael Jackson to do a rendition of his Thriller-dance in his corpse like state seemed a lot more reasonable.

And less terrifying.

She heard his breath hitch and she could almost picture him, opening and closing his mouth like a goldfish on dry land. She even found the image adorable.

Oh, that was dangerous territory. Very dangerous. This was a fucking minefield in the middle of a war zone. Think about the middle-east conflict and you get the idea.

"And I think you're adorable if you're confused", she blurted out suddenly.

Silence, only the acoustic noise mixing with the droning in head. Spinning, spinning, _spinning_.

"The way you knit your brow is really... cute", she added, biting her lip. "I want to lick it."

He sighed and it sounded pained. "I'm often... confused around you."

"Me wanting to lick your brow doesn't really help, does it?", she asked.

"Not really", he said, sounding restrained. "You're just... puzzling sometimes."

"I didn't ask you to solve me, you know?", she said and the slur in her voice smoothed out the acidness of the retort. "I'm not a parlour game for lonely evenings."

"I know."

Again the silence, the breathing, the freaking acoustic noise coming from her phone, swinging back and forth between them like a pendulum.

"This is really depressing, you know?", she complained, when she couldn't take it anymore. "Can't you phrase "I know" into something more eloquent? Just to make it easier for me to form a reply? Out of the kindness of your heart?"

Another sigh. It was getting pathological now. "What do you want, Elizabeth?"

"Flowers and a tiara", she joked and rolled her eyes. "I'm horny, Darcy. What do you think?"

"Less vulgar for sure." Oh, snarky Darcy was back! She'd missed him. Uh, that was dangerous ground again.

"Oh, how do you want to phrase it?", she slurred. "Cat in heat? Filled with an overwhelming desire? In need of stress relief?" She paused. "Gosh, that sounds like I need a work out..." Another pause before she cried out: "Pun fully intended!", while cackling like a child – or an evil witch, whatever one preferred.

"Exactly how many drinks did you have?", he asked sharply, suddenly sounding wide awake.

"Enough", she admitted. "But it didn't work out."

"What didn't work out?", he pressed. Really, that guy was more persistent than any shrink, she'd seen because of her commitment issues in the past few years – perhaps he should think about changing his job or becoming part of a pack of dogs (because he shared more than a few characteristics with a terrier from time to time).

"Getting rid of the enemy."

He cleared his throat and the sound rumpled through her ear, mind and the rest of her body. "What enemy?"

"I. Don't. _Know_", she whispered agitatedly. "But he left his toothbrush in my bathroom and I can't figure out if this is supposed to be a declaration of war or a thinly veiled reminder of the importance of oral hygiene." She huffed in annoyance and the implied insult.

"So this is about the toothbrush?", he concluded, sighing gravely.

"And the toothpaste!", she cried out. "For Fudge's sake, Darcy. Who the hell pays over fifty pounds for a single tube of toothpaste?"

"How do you now how much it costs if you're so appalled by it?", he retorted, sounding like Darcy, the psychologist again.

"I looked it up online", she admitted. "And let me tell you, your Highness, I was so close to calling it quits when I saw that web page..."

"And why is that?"

"Do you often engage women of questionable morals as your escorts to various social events? I mean besides C.C. Bingley."

"Why would you think that?", he asked bewildered and she could hear movement in the hallway outside of her closet, but the shuffling footsteps vanished after a couple of hectic breath intakes, caused by the fear of being found by Billy Collins.

"Because that web page looks like the one of a fucking high prized escort service!", she practically shouted. "Care to explain that?"

"Elizabeth, all I can gather from this exchange is that you accuse me of engaging an escort service, but how my brand of toothpaste is playing into that, completely eludes me."

"So are you hooking up with prostitutes on a regular basis?", Lizzie asked nonchalantly, kicking her legs up in the air to see if her feet were still alive. They were. _Barely_. "Or just C.C. Bing Bang?"

"Do you like insulting me?", he countered sharply.

"So that's a yes?", she concluded. "Good Gracious, I knew you were sleeping around when I saw that page."

"Elizabeth -"

"Why didn't you tell me that I should watch out for STDs?", she growled. "We should have never forgone condoms. I knew it was an idiotic idea to trust you, I just knew it! But you go there all Humphrey Bogart on me, telling me to look you in the eye, kid, and fucking believe that you don't screw some other girl the nights you're apparently always busy or that Bing Bang slut, you're always taking to those charity events. I'm such a fucking moron for actually believing that shit!"

"Elizabeth-"

"I just knew something was off with you acting so strange around me lately. I mean, what guy refuses a blow job?! And then you go and put that fucking toothbrush next to your fucking toothpaste in my bathroom! Is that supposed to be a parting gift or what? Because if you want to break up, whatever this is we're doing, then you can just take your fucking oral hygiene tools and shove them up your-"

"Elizabeth!", he barked and she heard something that suspiciously sounded like a fist against whatever piece of furniture available right now. "I'm not sleeping with anyone besides you, I don't have any STDs and I sure as hell don't engage an escort service despite whatever absurd proof you found online or what your paranoid mind tells you!"

"I'm not paranoid", she huffed.

"No, you're drunk", he sighed. "And throwing around accusations like sweets on carnival."

"You think I'm the one acting strange?", she cried out indignantly. "You're the one refusing a-"

"I know", he spat and that was something so close to aggression, an emotion he didn't allow himself to actually show that it shut her up for a good two seconds. "I _know_ that. I'm just trying to figure some things out."

"The toothbrush?", she asked.

"The toothbrush."

"It's scary, right?", she mused, leaning her head against the wall next to her. "I mean we..."

"Yes", he said quietly. "It's scary, but... Elizabeth", he whispered. "My father is ill."

"Oh", she said. "I'm sorry... I guess."

He laughed humourlessly. "You're nothing but honest, hmm?"

"I don't _know_ your Dad", she emphasized, frowning, the buzz of the alcohol making it hard for her to grasp a clear thought. As a journalist she knew that the picture of a person painted by the media was often more than inaccurate. Lizzie only knew that Darcy's father was more conservative than liberal, photographed more often with a frown or a scowl on his face than an actual smile and treated with something akin to devotion by most of the population. Darcy never talked much about his father, leaving him as this hole in the air, this unspoken figure in the background, the giant pink elephant in the middle of the room and she, being just as reluctant to talk about her own parental generation, never pushed the issue. It was awkward as hell either way.

"His heart is not doing well and the doctors are not optimistic", he whispered, knowing that the information he was giving her normally needed the highest security clearance possible and she was well aware of the fact that every journalist in this country would have gladly committed murder for this little piece of medical history, but she was just too drunk, too tired and too emotional right now to care.

"That doesn't sound... good", she offered, phrasing it more like a question than an actual statement.

The laugh crawling from his throat, through the phone and in her ear was bitter and for a moment she was tempted to ask if he was the one, who'd been drinking that night.

"They give him a few months at best", he said, his voice raw. "We're trying to get everything in order, to make it easier for the household, the people... for Georgie", his voice died at the mention of his little sister, that she'd never met and she felt like she'd just walked into the Twilight Zone, because having William Darcy on the phone pouring his heart out was something she'd never thought she'd witness. And she wasn't sure she was comfortable with it.

"I'm sorry", she croaked, her fingers shaking, not knowing how to handle him talking about his dying daddy. She couldn't even handle talking about her own sperm-donor, much less about the emotional bindings, tying someone else to his parental generation.

"I know", he said again and she felt like screaming because he didn't, he _couldn't_ know, after all they'd only been sleeping together and unless you could transfer stories about severe emotional damage during sexual intercourse, there was no way he could _know_. "I'm just trying to wrap my head around a lot of things, but it's hard grasping a clear thought these days...", he trailed off.

"Are we still talking about the toothbrush?", she questioned, biting her lower lip in anxiety.

"We are always talking about the toothbrush", he said matter of factly and she bit her lip so hard that she could taste the blood on her tongue. Because she just couldn't understand what his daddy had got to do with his toothbrush lying around in her bathroom.

"I told him about it", he suddenly said. "The toothbrush...I told him about it."

Her heartbeat picked up, making the poor thing pound painfully against her ribcage. "Gracious, Darcy... Do you think that was a good idea?", she sighed, sounding breathless.

"What do you mean?", he asked, his voice strained.

"I mean, conversations about oral hygiene can only worsen the medical condition of a heart-patient, don't you think? I'm sure he nearly had a stroke when you told him what you pay for that toothpaste of yours, not to mention the escort service."

"There's no escort service, Elizabeth." Oh, his majesty was not amused. How funny.

"Yeah, keep telling yourself that", she countered. "But I know C.C. Bing Bang Brilly Brilly. There's no way she can afford those jewels without being paid for her services and you know it."

"I don't care how Charlie's sister spends her free-time, Elizabeth."

"Yet you take her to all those charity-events", the three-year old in Lizzie responded.

"Are you jealous?", he growled.

"Ahm... How about, No?", she countered. "Does that clarify some things for you?"

"Then why do you care so much about her?"

"I don't care about her", Lizzie huffed in annoyance. "But I care about STDs and as a matter of fact, I know, that she's been in Thailand recently, so do you have something to confess?", she asked grimly, fully prepared to face another one of Darcy's barks, telling her to be reasonable and not so childishly stubborn.

"My father wants to meet you", he blurted and the shocked silence afterwards was almost deafening.

"He wants what?", she spluttered, trying to scramble to her feet, but her shoes were in the way. "Darcy, your father hates me!"

"He never said that!"

"He might as well have", she shouted. "Or were the words: "Go, fuck your little journalist, but be sure to keep your mouth shut and your dick wrapped up and don't raise her expectations, because you're a Darcy and Darcys _always_ do their duty", not enough? Because hey, the thing with the wrapper didn't work, did it? And now I'm the one, who has to worry about venereal diseases, 'cause I'm covered and you don't need to concern yourself with any unwanted Darcy-bastards!"

"I'm sorry", he said strained. "I'm sorry that you heard that and -"

"Yeah, my one and only time in your infamous domicile, right?", she interjected sarcastically. "We didn't make it to your bed to begin with and then your dad interrupted us while I was still in the shower."

"He wasn't too happy to see us", he admitted contritely. "But that was months ago."

"Twelve weeks", she said. "And I had nightmares afterwards."

"I know", he said, yawning. "You woke me up, because -"

"- you didn't deserve to sleep when I couldn't", she finished the sentence, feeling her heart flutter strangely when he laughed at that.

"I'm serious, Lizzie. The past weeks have been... illuminating. He's a lot calmer and he says he wants to meet you", Darcy tried again after a while, but she could barely hear him with her alarm clock ringing loudly in her head, demanding immediate evacuation.

"Perhaps he's hallucinating", she replied curtly, trying to arrange her legs so that she could get back on her feet. "Or on pain meds, I hear, they can really mess up your head."

"Elizabeth, my father is not crazy. He may be a very conservative, sometimes narrow-minded old man -"

"-with a very impressive vocabulary and a partiality for cussing", she interjected.

"-but he's not out of his mind", Darcy finished his explanation. "And he means it, when he says he wants to meet you. He says you sound intriguing-"

"-Or in other words: _Weird_."

"Intelligent."

"A know-it-all."

"Funny."

"Ridiculous."

"Beautiful."

She let out a sigh, the word hanging in the room like a bad smell. "Darcy, you don't need to sweet-talk me, I'm already sleeping with you."

She heard him letting out a breath. "I'm not telling you this with second thoughts, Elizabeth."

Lizzie rolled her eyes. "Yeah, I kind of doubt that, considering that you're trying to get me to _like_ your father."

"He's not a bad person."

She huffed. "Sure", she said. "Listen, Darcy, I have to go, I think I'm sober enough to brave the onslaught and I need to do something about my feet. _And_ Billy Collins while I'm at that."

"The creepy guy with the big moustache?", Darcy asked. "And, Lizzie, you're definitely not sober."

"I'm not a lightweight, Darcy, I had worse. And Billy Collins is not a creepy guy, he's a _creep_. Period."

"Is that supposed to reassure me?", he asked. "And we're not finished with the conversation."

"I think I'm done", she cut him off. "I'm sorry about your Dad, I really am, but I don't think I can help you with that. We can talk on-"

"Elizabeth, what the fuck is that supposed to mean?! You're playing the jealousy card during this whole conversation, accusing me of lying, cheating and god knows what else and when I'm trying to make concessions, you're backing off faster than I can say "knife"? So what the fuck?"

She knew it was strange, but hearing him swearing, well that did things to her body. Oh, there was the battlefield territory again.

"Concessions? This is not a fucking business deal, your Highness. I only asked you what the fuck you were thinking putting a fucking toothbrush in my bathroom, but instead of removing all your personal belongings from my apartment since this is only a fuck-buddy-deal, you turn this whole thing into a fucking rom-com!"

"Pray tell, how am I turning this into a Hollywood-movie? I asked you to meet my dad since he's been asking for you, because I thought it would make you feel better, knowing that I'm not keeping you a dirty little secret despite whatever C.C. Bingley's _warbling_ might have told you", he yelled enraged.

"Because you're making a brand new Cinderella-movie out of this, casting me as the girl, they later turn into a princess!"

"I'm not-"

"Oh, you damn well are!", she shouted, not caring about anyone overhearing them. "And let me tell you one thing, Darcy. I'm no fucking princess!"  
>"What does-"<p>

"Let me tell you a story", she hissed, trying desperately to keep her emotions in check. "Once upon a time, there were five little girls living in a far away kingdom with their Mummy and Daddy. They didn't have much money, but their father called them his princesses either way, while always telling their mother that one day, one day he would be king and she'd be his queen." She took a breath, while silence greeted her from the other side of the telephone cable.

"And he'd take her and spin her round in their small, but warm kitchen, making her laugh silly and the little girls would smile and sing that nursery rhyme about lavender... _Dilly, dilly..._"

"Lizzie..."

"Anyway, someday it happened and they finally had money. A _lot_... a shitload of money", she emphasized. "And all these things their father always promised them, the palace, the garden, the fucking pony in their backyard, they all became real. The princesses thought they were living in a dream, one with crystal chandeliers and breakfast eaten in a room bigger than their old house. They thought they were real princesses now, they even had crowns and towels with their monograms stitched onto. Oh, _dilly, dilly_." She laughed bitterly.

"But just how it is with Kings and Queens, when they get what they want, it sometimes can take over their whole life, they become obsessed with it and forget whatever made their life worthwhile before." She sighed. "They forgot the princesses. First only for an afternoon turning into an evening and then midnight, when they were invited to a friend's ball, then for a few weeks making a safari in Africa and then finally one of the little princesses came home one day from school only to be told by her older and younger sisters that their parents were gone for an unknown amount of time. The servants would take care of them, their parents had said, admonishing them to be good little girls."

She shook her head. "It took over a year for the King and Queen to come back to their Kingdom, only to leave it again after a couple of days and some hair-ruffling and air-kissing. In the years to follow they would do a lot of trips like that, leaving the five princesses in the castle until they were old enough to get out of it." She gulped down the tears, alcohol was always making her hyper-emotional. "They'd forget their names, their faces, birthdays, anniversaries... They would come home one day for the graduation of their oldest child, which had happened three weeks before, only to be met by five nearly grown-up princesses, they didn't recognize. _Dilly, dilly_. So yeah, Darcy, you can see that I'm not really into fairy-tales", she ended bitterly.

He was silent for a while and she appreciated it, she needed the time to pull herself together.

"What happened to the little princess?", he then asked and her breathing became erratic.

"She grew up", Lizzie said and hung up.

* * *

><p>She said there, staring into the darkness, the buzz gone, but the dizziness remained, while her breathing was erratic. In and Out. <em>In and Out<em>.

It had been a long time since she'd thought about her parents last. In her mind, they were mostly like a pair of distant crazy relatives, always coming and going with the wind, bringing and taking ridiculously expensive presents like the little monkey in a uniform or a set of 109 silver spoons on her twelfth birthday (as always over a month later). She'd pushed the hurt about their absence, the implied rejection somewhere away into the depths of her mind. To her Jane and Mrs Hill, the housekeeper, were more her parents than anybody else.

But thinking about it hurt. Thinking about it reduced her to the crying six-year old running from room to room, looking for her parents, because they had, they just _had_ to be somewhere in that giant palace. Thinking about it made her remember how night after night she would sit on the staircase overlooking the driveway, waiting for them come back until Jane or Mrs Hill would come, tucking her back into her bed, because her hand and feet were freezing.

With a huff close to a whimper, close to a desperate cry she kicked off her shoes, pressing her naked feet against the floor and pushing her body up in the air.

She was swaying, stretching out her hands to keep her balance, but that was a battle lost a long time ago and it was a close to a miracle that she made it out into the hallway.

"Miss Bennet", a voice cried out and she groaned in annoyance.

"Not right now, Collins", she barked, marching right past him, but his greedy little hands were faster, tightening around her arm and waist.

"You're not going to leave now, darling, are you?", he growls in what was supposed to be a seductive tone, but it only made her want to hurl, especially when the scent of his greasy cologne hit her.

"Get your fingers off me, Collins, or it'll be a cold day in hell 'till your reproductive organs are working again", she threatened, trying to shake him off.

"Oh, baby, don't be like that", he laughs, stroking her shoulder. "I know how fascinated you are with my reproductive organs, so don't play coy with me!"

The sweaty hand on her shoulder moved down her arm and came to rest on her hip, an eager smile playing around the little rat's lips. And as if a switch was turned on, her whole demeanour changed. Lizzie smiled, batting her eyelashes, placing a hand on Billy Collin's shoulder, which was covered in a rather hideous red velvet jacket, while he looked at her pleased and appreciatively.

It made her want to gag.

"Oh Collins", she breathed, stroking the disgusting material of his coat. "How well you know me..." She came closer and she saw him eyeing her cleavage like it was something to eat.

Wrong move, motherfucker.

"But really..." She bent her knee. "I'm not _that_ interested in them", she whispered and with one move she raised her knee and kicked him in the nuts with all her might. "Besides cutting them off."

He tumbled over, trying to protect his precious crotch while howling in pain. "I told you to take your filthy hands off me", she sneered, pushing him off and letting him fall to the floor.

They were people in the hallway, people Lizzie normally worked with, but right now, she was too drunk, too over-emotional, too fucked up to care.

She pushed her way through the throngs of people back into the party hall, only to be assaulted by another voice."

"Oh my god!", her ex-best-friend shouted. "What did you do to Billy?"

"Taught him some manners", Lizzie said through gritted teeth. "I don't like being felt up by some greasy little weasel no matter what's his name."

"You're dressed like a slut", Charlotte accused her, scanning her outfit disapprovingly. "It shouldn't surprise you."

"Yeah and you look like some housewife from the fifties", Lizzie retorted, her anger boiling at her friend's narrow-mindedness. "Did your boyfriend buy you these?", she pointed at the pearl necklace around Charlotte's throat – looking like a noose around her neck.

"No, my _fiancé_", the woman, she'd shared an apartment with for over three years, replied proudly.

"Oh, are congratulations in order?", Lizzie cried out with exaggerated surprise. "You really are selling everything to him, hmm? Do you know that it's called prostitution?"

"Because you know so much about it?", Charlotte said, eyeing her dress and the low neckline with disdain. "You could do the same, you know?", she suddenly remarked, her whole demeanour changing. "You could also get yourself a man, Lizzie. No more fucking around behind someone's back, but a good, rich man, who can offer you something." She patted her cheek and if there was one thing that Lizzie Bennet couldn't stand it was being treated like a child. Her mother always did that, because the woman still thought she was the same child, she'd left in that giant castle over twenty years ago.

"You're such a pretty little thing if you don't dress like a high-class hooker." She eyed the dress again. "Or more like a common prostitute."

That did it. "Fuck you", Lizzie hissed, swatting Charlotte's hand away. "And fuck your chauvinistic asshole of a fiancé, this isn't 1968, you retarded Suzie-homemaker." She made a step back, shoes in her hand, swinging them like a weapon. "Contrary to what you might believe, I'm _not_ fucking around and I like my dignity _intact_." She turned around, ready to leave.

"You know that he'll never make an honest woman out of you, don't you?", she heard Charlotte calling after her. "Despite how many times you drop to your knees for him, he'll never be yours. Never, Lizzie. He'll marry that Bingley girl or some other princess, someone with actual _manners_."

Lizzie halted in her step, taking one last look at the desperate looking woman behind her. "Fuck you, Charlotte Lucas", she repeated again, swallowing down the sadness at losing the person, that had been her best friend for so long before squaring her shoulders and making her way to the exit, marching past Ed Gardiner and his wife, who were calling her name.

"Just... fuck you."

She took a cab to her apartment, ignoring the driver's attempts at conversation, which turned into flirtations before they finally ceased. Her mind wandered back to what Charlotte had said. ..._he'll never be yours... Never, Lizzie... _and despite every annoying Britney-Spears-song she tried to play in her head, those words wouldn't stop haunting her.

Never is a strong word, Lizzie. You sure, you're up for that?, the annoying voice inside her head asked, while she politely asked it to shut the fuck up.

It was dark in the hallway of her little apartment complex and she could hear the clinking of her keys, despite the droning in her head, while her feet patted over the tiled floor until she reached her apartment door.

"And I'm back in the house!", Lizzie shouted out to no one in particular, when she entered the cold and dark apartment, throwing those death traps of shoes in a corner. This whole evening was one big, fat failure anyway.

"Aw, I always feel so appreciated", she chuckled when no one in the dark answered her before making her way to the bathroom.

Her face in the mirror caught her off guard. The bright neon light was humming and flickering, making her look like a ghost in between white walls, her red dress sticking out like a neon-sign.

"You're a mess, darling", she whispered to herself, tracing the line of her smudged eye-make-up down her cheek. She didn't know, she'd been crying. "A fucking mess with no way to get out."

She practically ripped off the constricting dress from her body, leaving her only in her black lace underwear and too many bones under skin to count. She held onto the sink, when the full effect of the alcohol came back and hit her like wave, the room around her started to spin and she groaned, sinking to her knees.

This was too much. She felt her body slackening before the nausea hit her and she scrambled back onto her knees, hurling everything there was into the toilet bowl.

When the gag reflex stopped, she let herself sink back onto the bathroom floor, sobbing quietly in self-pity about what a fucking horrible place the world could be.

_Lavender's blue, lavender's green, dilly, dilly... when I am King, you shall be Queen, dilly, dilly..._

The rhyme made her laugh bitterly and the motion caused the nausea to erupt again, she lunged for the toilet, her legs and the rest of her body somewhere on the bathroom floor.

And that's how he found her, hanging over the toilet, her hair spilling over her back, while she was puking out her guts.

"Lizzie", she heard him calling, movements and noises around her and then he held back her hair, when another wave hit her.

"What do you want here"?, she snapped, pushing him off, when she could finally breathe again.

"I was worried", he said, looking up at her when she got back onto her feet, concern shimmering in those icy blue eyes before it was replaced with something else, when he took in her attire.

"Did you attend that company party dressed like that?", he asked incredulously, pupils dilated and she felt the goosebumps on her skin, where his eyes raked over her.

"No", she said. "I had a dress." Lizzie pointed to the red silk thing on the floor and grabbed a toothbrush to get that godawful taste out of her mouth.

She was still dizzy, even though the nausea had vanished, since there was nothing left in her body to get out (besides her soul, but she'd lost that one a long time ago) and he steadied her when she swayed a bit.

"That dress?", he asked. "For a company party? Are you serious?"

She didn't meet his eyes, the guilt so overwhelming that she turned on the water faucet so that she could turn out the neurons working in his head.

"What did you had in mind when you wore that dress, Lizzie?", he asked dangerously calm and leaned in close.

She wouldn't look up, instead she stared down at the toothbrush in her hand.

"What did you want to accomplish, Elizabeth?", he growled. "Tell me. Just fucking tell me!"

She felt her anger boiling, his accusations making her hide behind her own aggressiveness. Offence after all is still the best defence. "You want to know? Well, fine!", she shouted. "I wanted to find someone to fuck me, okay? To just. _Fuck. Me_", she emphasized those words, seeing him shrink back when the words hit him like a bullet to the back of his head.

"You wanted someone to fuck you", he repeated soundlessly. "You wanted to get laid and when you couldn't find someone you called me." She saw his hand trembling. "What the _fuck_", he cursed, turning around and running his hands through his hair (which was awfully messy by the way). "And I... I asked you to meet my father..." He shakes his head, closing his eyes. "I... I can't believe it."

Lizzie was trembling, too. Her hand holding the toothbrush was shaking and it was hard to put the paste on it, like shooting hoops at basketball when you're drunk off your ass.

"I can't believe you did that", he went on. "I thought we had a deal, Lizzie? You play jealous the whole time about that simpering Bingley fool and at the same time you're secretly fucking some one else?" She could hear the utter desperation and defeat in his voice and it sent her stomach tossing and turning. She put the toothbrush in her mouth just to keep herself from throwing something snarky back at him.

"Oh fuck-", he stopped right in the middle of the sentence when she turned around, staring at her with his mouth agape, but not looking at her boobs or her ass (which she could have understood, considering she was wearing nothing but sheer lace underwear), but at the toothbrush in her mouth.

He tried to say something, but nothing came out of it and there was something... something vulnerable in his eyes, that set her off. She took the toothbrush from her mouth and looked at it.

"Shit!", she cried out. "Oh, shit, shit, fuck!" She spit out the toothpaste and threw the brush into the sink like it had burned her.

The toothbrush, that wasn't hers. The white stains of the toothpaste, that wasn't hers.

"Oh, fuck, fuck, fuckety fuck!", she cursed, to caught up in the image presenting itself in the sink to realize that Darcy had just left the room.

"Shit." She pressed her head against the cool porcelain of the sink. The peppermint taste in her mouth seemed to burn on her tongue. She'd just had his toothbrush in her mouth, the fucking toothpaste, he'd paid over 50 pounds for. And he'd just stared at her.

But why? Why was this such a big deal? She'd had a lot worse, had a lot more _personal_ things in there, so why did this peppermint thing freaked her out that much?

Because -

"I love you", she suddenly whispered to the sink, to the shaking reflection of herself in the mirror, which was staring back at her in shock with those strange lilac coloured eyes. "I love you", she said again as if testing the words, assessing their meaning.

"I love you", she breathed again, but this time more like some kind of admission. "I-"

"You what?", an incredulous sounding voice came from the doorway and there he was, in all his glory, crumpled and dishevelled, his eyes wide open, looking so hurt and lost that she just wanted to wrap her body around his to keep him from falling apart. "Elizabeth?", he whispered.

And for a few sharp intakes they just stared at each other, chests heaving, while she looked at him like deer caught in the headlights.

"I...", she stuttered, wanting to say "Thanks, but no thanks", wanting to say that she couldn't, that she was sorry, but that she just -

She let out a hysteric laugh, shaking her whole body, while he just stood there. She pressed a hand against her mouth, the other cradling her side, while the high-pitched laugher just poured out of her mouth. There were tears in her eyes and her stomach began to hurt while she was laughing and he just helplessly tried to get a hold of her.

Lizzie pushed right past him, back into the living room, her kitchen, where she rounded the counter before letting her head fall against its surface, while bouts of laughter where still shaking her body.

It was so fucking hilarious.

"You want to know... why I did this?", she gasped, wiping tears from her eyes, when she finally got a hold of herself. "Why I wanted someone to _fuck_ me?"

He winced at the words as if it weren't the same ones, he'd used just minutes ago.

She shook her head, looking up at him. "Because I love you!", she cried out. "I love you and I know that it's fucking impossible, that it's so close to ridiculous that you could just sell me to the nearest circus if you wanted to. I love you and I know that you don't feel the same. I love you and I know that all I ever be to you is a convenient _fuck_, because let's face it, I even dress like a whore, but-" She shook her head before slowly lifting it and looking him in the eye. He was closer than she'd previously thought.

"You're not a whore", he said, looking positively lethal. "Don't you dare say that about herself ever again, Elizabeth." He put his hands, hot, warm, scorching, on her arms, holding her tight. "And you're anything but a convenient lay." He shook his head with a smile. "You know that being around you is like walking around a fucking minefield sometimes, right?"

"You're one to talk", she scoffed, fighting his hands off her. "Mr. You-don't-have-the-necessary-security-clearance-for-that-kind-of-information Darcy."

She steadied herself by leaning against the wall. "And do you know, what the sad thing is?"

He shook his hands, his brow furrowed.

"That you passed the test." She sighed. "I tried to find someone to sleep with, but I...I couldn't, okay? It made me physically ill just thinking about it and right now I fucking hate it that I can only tell you that shit when I'm drunk!" She huffed. "I love you and that's _drunk_ Lizzie speaking."

"Drunk Lizzie?" Why the heck was he all smiles and sunshine now? Ten minutes ago he'd been about to rip her head off, was the guy bipolar or something?

"Yeah, sober Lizzie is always repressing drunk Lizzie's feelings", she said with a shrug. "It's all a very split-personality and schizophrenic type of thing."  
>"Medical intervention necessary?", he asked, arching an eyebrow.<p>

"Hell yes!", she cried out, smiling crookedly. "And you have to remind me, you know? I'll probably will forget this conversation in the morning, considering that I'm drunk off my ass, but-" She came closer to him, aligning her body with his and she sighed when the numb feeling of security seeped right through her. He wrapped his arms around her, one hand slowly travelling south, stopping when he met the line of her panties before slipping under the lace and continuing his journey. She sighed in content, feeling warm and fuzzy. "Hmm..."

"Yeah?", he asked and she could hear the smug smile in his voice, the one, that he always sported when he was able to distract her like that. She was not going to lie, he was really fucking good at it.

"If there ever is a time", she whispered. "You have to tell me. If there ever is a time, when.. when you and I... when it becomes a possibility... us...", she trailed off, her hands moving under his dress shirt.

He softly nibbled at her upper lip. "You taste like my toothpaste", he whispers. "That's really fucking cute."

"Oh yeah?" She cocked an eyebrow, softly biting his lower lip. "I like it."

He smiled, curling his fingers and she gasped. "Promise me...", she whispered. "Promise, that you will tell me, okay? Even though I'll probably rip your head off in the process, promise me, promise-"

"I promise", he said, leaning down to whisper it in her ear, while they were doing their own stumbling, tumbling little waltz in Lizzie's living room, in the semi-dark, while she gasped into his mouth, falling into a blinding, scorching, all-consuming coma.

"I promise."

* * *

><p><strong>AN: So what do you think? The nursery rhyme about lavender is called Lavender, I believe, but you proabably know that better than I do;) The idea to "Dinosaur-day" stems from my baby brother, who has these cute little onesies with names for every day of the week, there's carday and rabbitday and: dinosaurday! Which made me laugh, because that baby is just too fucking cute;)  
><strong>

**There's a lot of slut shaming in this chapter and since this a topic everybody has an opinion on, I thought I give my two cents to it:**

**I don't particularly like the term "slut". In my opinion, be who you want to be as long as you're not hurting anyone. If you want to be a slut, then _be_ a slut. Just use protection and go to check-ups. STDs are just nasty. It's nobodys business what you do in your bedroom and nobody has the right to just touch a woman only because she's wearing a revealing dress or because "she hooks up with everyone". That's just such a lame ass, jealousy fueled excuse for insulting someone. And while I get that whole evolutionary-explanation as to why it is okay for guys to sleep around and not for girls, forget it, this is the twenty-first century, we're not living in caves anymore, okay? **

**Well, that's my opinion and I'm sorry if that came over a little harsh, but this topic has been on my mind for quite sometime now for personal reasons... There's an interview with Lind-Z from Mindless Self Indulgence on Youtube, it's from Taste it TV and I think she sums it up pretty good:)  
><strong>

**Anyway, I like to hear your opinions, so what do you think?;)**


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